


the good that won't come out

by CloudDreamer



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Day X, Dad Sandoval Crossing, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Esme Ramsey Is Haunted, Eyes, Fictional politics, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Hellmouth-Typical Body Horror, Manhandling (Referenced), Past Violence, Past/Referenced Non-Consensual Touching (Nonsexual), Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sandy is a good dad, Suicidal Thoughts, Teeth, The Hellmouth, The Hellmouth Anti-Tourism Board, Touch-Repulsed Esme Ramsey, Water Pressure, Whatnot, tea and cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29451831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: Esme Ramsey's haunted.The League wants her to share. She retreats to Sandoval Crossing of the Hellmouth Sunbeams's apartment.
Relationships: Esme Ramsey & The Hellmouth, Esme Ramsey & The Hellmouth Sunbeams, Sandoval Crossing & Esme Ramsey, Velasquez Meadows/Rhys Trombone/Sandoval Crossing
Kudos: 3
Collections: Charleston Shoe Thieves Fanfiction





	the good that won't come out

Esme Ramsey’s phone is left on the end of the kitchen counter, adjacent to an open Charleston Shoe Thieves blue box with a Charleston Shoe Thieves yellow ribbon left unwrapped beside it in a sort of pile. Her phone is encased in a simple sleek black case, serviceable and enforced. It buzzes, moving back and forth, and before one buzz is done, another starts. She could get up and put it on silence, but then she’d have to confront the pure volume of notifications piling up. 

She doesn’t want to do that. It already took so much, just getting here from after the game, and she knows all the back ways to and around the Hellmouth. She doesn’t know how someone else would cope with this. She doesn’t know how she’s doing it. She’s just— existing, she supposes, in the same way she’s always existed. This is just a further step down the road that’s been set out for her since she first drunk from the primordial sludge, all those years ago. 

She taps her fingers against the fabric of the couch she’s curled up on to a rhythm that only she can hear. It’s the song of the Trench. She’s in tune with the distant creatures so far above and beyond them that reign over the forces of life and death now. At least, the ones who rule over that for Blaseball, because death isn’t supposed to be this way. Mediums are supposed to be born, not made. Not hastily poured into a person, to the point where the connection is overflowing. It resounds through her, and the note is wrong. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t let this inadequacy overcome her enough to shake her more than this weakness. 

Her legs are to her knees, her head is to her chest, and she doesn’t know how to reconcile the stone still body with the song she hears and the thoughts so dark that threaten to overcome her. She came here — she came _home_ to feel safe — which seems a little ridiculous, now that she thinks about it. This isn’t her home, and it hasn’t been for years. For fucks sake, she had to break and enter to get here. She couldn’t stand the idea of looking at her phone for long enough to call. Besides. Sandy has his own people he’d want to see. She doesn’t want to disappoint him. His new roommate too, maybe? Hard to speak for the avatar of Bishop Sutton. There’s too many often dissenting opinions, it’s hard to tell when they care about anyone in particular, and the avatar itself tends to be somewhat unpredictable, as well as inscrutable. Either way. 

She’s alone here, for now, their game either still going or done and them off celebrating. They’re up against the Dale today, so, should be an easy enough win. Only she and Atlas Jonbois, who sits next to her, hovering awkwardly. He wants to reach out to her, but there’s not enough substance for touch. Even if there was, Esme wouldn’t want that. Not that he knows. Not that he would’ve known. 

“Go away,” she hisses, not looking at him. He pulls back a bit, adjusting his position on the couch and scooting his legs back. One moves through the fabric. He’s not wearing any shoes. He wasn’t here or when she’d first seen him on the field, confused, staring at her with wide eyes like she was the entire world. She’d been at bat getting ready to hit or maybe let a ball too far out of reach fly -- she’s the most walked player in the league for a reason -- when something in her had shifted. The faint distant rhythm she hadn’t been able to get out of her head since the last vote was cast rose to a crescendo. Atlas had been standing there, long black hair pulled up in a ponytail, a t-shirt with blurred words set into his form not too obviously different from skin, athletic shorts sagging down around his thick, hairy legs, his large nose prominent on his otherwise thin face, and his mouth curled open like he was trying to scream with nothing coming. 

And she’d known she could give him a voice. She’d known it like she knows the shape of eternity, intimately and with a surety that runs farther than to the sun and back. The bat dropped from her hand, and she’d reached out with a hand instead. No questions asked then, as she fell back, stepping out of her skin to watch as he disappeared into it. And then again, and it’d felt like coming home. It was sinking into Sandy’s arms — _don’t_ touchme — after pushing him aside so many times, letting everything flow out, but that rightness, that sense of familiarity, lasted moments. When she found herself again, it was seconds in, ball having made contact with bat, and pushing him away, already so cognizant of how her shirt clings to her body, how much every touch rattles her like someone else breathing in her ear or hands at her neck. It’s a failure. It’s not being able to give him what he wants. 

Atlas doesn’t leave. He doesn’t seem to know how to let go, but well, that makes two of them. There’s something unbearable about having slipped into an apartment she knows she would’ve been let into, if she’d just fucking asked. The layers of reinforced glass on the window that overlooks a tooth crag are as strong as the walls she keeps up around her. Dull words, laced with bitterness, that’s all she lets out just like all this place is letting out now is a weak light. She’d turned a single lamp on, so she didn’t trip on something, but other than that and the constant glowing light of her screen, this room is frosted with a layer of shadow. 

“You’re not my friend, and you don’t have anything to prove. You replaced one of my dead friends, and then you died and got replaced in turn. So go back to being dead.” 

He tries to open his mouth again, to say something, but nothing comes out. He doesn’t have a voice without her, He doesn’t have anything without her. Still, she can sort of figure out what he would’ve said, if he could. Not really well, because she really hadn’t gotten to know him much — that was on purpose — but sort of. He’s the kind of guy that wants to fix things. Even if he’s the broken one. 

“I need to be alone. That’s what’s going to help.”

 _Then why did you come here?_ That isn’t what she thinks he would say, if he could. She doesn’t think he’d be able to recognize what this place means to her. She doesn’t talk about Moab and then, later on, the Hellmouth much. She’ll drop a reference here or there, unthinkingly, but with the same monotonous tone she uses to describe the weather, which she’s rarely concerned by. Even when people she knows and allegedly cares about are marked for death. 

The voice is her own. It rattles around in her head, a coin insistently refusing to just land on one side or the other. And when Atlas is gone, she doesn’t even notice for long minutes. When she does, she adjusts her position, pulling her feet onto the couch instead.

She stares at the black mirror, which turns to static for just a second, and examining her reflection. It’s not something she despises. It’s not something she thinks about at all. It’s a vessel for Esme Ramsey, who is a vessel for the destruction of the universe, and that will be the vessel for the creation of something new. What’s the point getting hung up on things like physical form? Why should she care that this place has never accepted her, has refused to mark her for anything but destruction? She doesn’t long for its love. She’s survived here, and that’s enough to prove she could belong, if she wanted to. 

It’s not like she doesn’t have anywhere else to go to. Charleston wants her. It calls her name, with as much dedication as this place’s refusal. So there’s nothing to prove. 

She twists a bracelet around her wrist. Blue and yellow beads surround a short series of white cube letters, spaced by small black ones, and they read out C-U-R-S-E-D. It was ironic, at first, but she’s started to take some bitter pride in it. They fought a fucking god, and sure, they lost, but damn if they didn’t play. Garages, eat your hearts out. And all that talk about the Crabs taking them down, that they were so much better than those upstart Shoe Thieves, they hadn’t known shit. 

She was on the front lines, and what she has to show for it is a silly bracelet that might break at any moment, a godgiven curse to match her normal shit luck, and the pity of the League. But they don’t pity her now, not when they’re busy begging, threatening, bribing her for just one little thing. _Just one little thing, just fifteen minutes, Esme, please. Don’t you know how much I love them, Esme have a heart for once in your life, and let me see my… insert whatever their dead player was to them here._

And a better person would’ve seen that and gone, let me make a schedule. Let me give everyone their time. But Esme is hiding, tucked away in love she won’t accept. Maybe that’s why the Hellmouth hates her. Because she’s too broken to let Sandy do as much as pat her back without something going still and dying. Because she’s cold under the burning sun. She gives everyone on her team what she makes in the kitchen because it’s the closest thing she has to showing them she cares, if she even cares at all, but she knows better than to think that’s love. That’s buying them. That’s guaranteeing that at least somebody will be sad when she dies, and maybe one day, as the world ends by her hands, someone will not hate her for all she has wrought. 

It’s suddenly all she can think of. A single tear, maybe, before everything goes dark for the last time. For everyone. And maybe that’s a bit much to ask for, with some pastries, even the frequently reported best pastries people have ever had, but she doesn’t know what else she can do. She’s not kind. Encouraging words come out as mockery. Time spent is something but it’s never easy. Nothing comes easy to Esme except for destruction, for denial. 

And she is destroying with every no, with every lost love left on read. They should know better, really, then to expect something good from her. She holds herself tight. She might’ve played the role of one, but she’s no hero. Esme did not martyr herself. She didn’t chose to be crunched beneath the Peanut; it was all just chance. Bloody, ugly, chance, and everyone knows how the roll of the dice goes for the Shoe Thieves. Go to Canada and die, play on a Tuesday and die, win their first championship and feel like you’re dead. Their accolades, as pathetic and pitiful as they might be, are still only temporary. Soon enough, they’ll start to say she’s nothing but a coward, and that’s if they’re being charitable. 

The song rises, like someone else is being pulled upwards only minutes after Atlas let the waves take him back under, and Esme clenches her fists. She tries to remember what Vel said about ghosts on the handful of only slightly awkward occasions the two of them were left together, usually when Sandy and Rhys were off doing something, and they’d usually ended up talking spooky or old Moab or mutual friends. He knew her destiny, hadn’t treated her any different. But all she can think of with him is his warm, almost quiet but always audible voice that tried to fill in holes and sometimes ended up stumbling through them. Imperfect. Always imperfect. But that was what was nice about him. 

She ends up on long nights beneath the desert sky, before the earth tore open and fire tasted his sun touched skin, watching shitty tv shows with all three of them, curled up on the opposite side of this very couch while they were all in a pile on the other, and then he was there. The same as he always was, shaded in a blue light that’s coming from far above. Teeth stitch his shoulder and arm together and silver lace stretches across his neck, always molding, and the Trench’s gleam reflects off it so strangely. His hair hasn’t changed at all over the years it’s been, dreadlocks still at the same length, beard not any longer even though he’d talked about growing it out. No new scars, no exhaustion burnt into his skin. Unlike her.

She knows he’s there, knows every detail of his appearance, his futile attempts to breath and make himself heard, but she doesn’t turn to look at him, not even when he switches to Celestial sign language. She knows it, though she’s better with American. Neither of them really have all the hands for the nuances. He knows she can see him with that understanding that isn’t sight. She didn’t want this. 

“What does a lady have to do to get some privacy?” she asks, still not looking at him. He’s about to laugh a bit, with that half smile that Sandy never shut up about, not until he died, and even then. Even then. _Don’t come to Hellmouth._ Hellmouth has its own sign, one that needed some adaptation for those without wings, and it has in Celestial for a long time. American had needed a new one. There are probably some implications to that, but Esme’s been around the block enough times that she knows it’s probably better not to dig or even be mildly curious. She turns, adjusting her posture again.

He’s where Atlas was, not too long ago, but he’s much more comfortable in his ghostly form. He looks natural like this, maybe more natural than he looked in his own flesh, skin, and bone. Maybe that’s what it means, to be a medium. To have more familiarity with death than with life. Seeing him, knowing him like she knows an extension of her own body, it’s like an iron weight settles on her, pinning her to the ground and sending her internal compass spinning. Which way is north? Which way is out? 

And before she can say anything to the signs he just barely finishes, there’s new sounds just outside the door. She knows what rain-boots sound like, even with special anti-acid coatings that are regulation in Hellmouth. Her eyes widen as she turns away from Velasquez towards the door before back to him.“Whoops,” she mutters, getting to her feet as she tries to calculate how long she’s been here for. She hadn’t thought it was that long, but ever since the fight against the Peanut, time has been running away from her like water in a tap turned all the way. Velasquez doesn’t move, not like she does, even when they both clearly hear the key turning in the door. Esme hadn’t broken it as she’d gotten in this time, like she’d used to, and there’s really no indicator that she’s been here from the outside. She knows how to remain unseen from the paparazzi in the greater world who were so eager to see what she’d had to say on the whole haunting matter, and they don’t have cameras in Hellmouth. Anyone who tries will have to clean off whatever viscera it turns into within an hour or so. Phones are okay, for short periods of time, as long as she doesn’t try to photograph anything. 

She steps towards the curtains, the first hiding spot she can think of, even as she knows Velasquez is rolling his eyes. “Don’t say a word,” she threatens, one finger to her mouth before she wraps herself in the heavy black fabric. It needs to be heavy, in case anything gets through the glass, and Velasquez shakes his head. Instead of moving to find somewhere to hide, he just vanishes. Fading into nothingness, just like where it’d come from.

“I’m home!” Sandoval calls out to the handful of succulents that have survived on his windowsill. 

Most of them have done fine in the rough environment, growing an eye here or a tentacle there. The real danger is Sutton, who, when the pub is empty and nobody is there to reign in its wilder instincts or when its far too full of drunk villagers and everyone is determined to one up each other with their chaotic hijinks, is the biggest threat to their continued wellbeing. Some of them have developed poisoned darts, which have done the best to ward off the beast. 

Sandoval hits the light switch, and things flicker on, one by one. He puts down his bag, lets out a sigh of relief. Home at last. Every game could his last, and it wasn’t this time. Esme breaths evenly from where she stands beneath layers of fabric clumped enough that they should hide her face. 

Esme can’t see past the curtains, that’s sort of the point, but she knows Sandy’s routine. He’ll go into the kitchen, open up one of the cupboards above the sink and pull out a mug with a cutesy saying on it. She hears his footsteps as he crosses and then the gentle swing of the cupboard door, both open and then shut. There’s some time between the opening and closing, and she hears him rummaging as he reaches further back. He’s also careful as he puts the mug down, more careful than he is with some of the newer ones. 

The Sunbeams must’ve won without any deaths or swaps, then, if he’s going for an older one. There’s only a few of his gifts from his husbands left, since Sutton went through a good chunk of them when it’d first moved in, so Sandy reserves them for special occasions now. Nagomi had gotten some of them repaired with kintsugi, but she couldn’t do anything for the ones that Sutton had already eaten chunks of or had pieces that’d grown eyes or started bleeding at the edges. For those, Nagomi had tried to find replacements, but it wasn’t the same. Esme was a bit miffed she hadn’t come up with the idea herself, but what could you do. If it made Sandy happy, then it was good. Who cared that Nagomi could hug him when he was lonely? Who cared that she understood him in ways Esme couldn’t?

He presses the button to start the water boiling, reaching into a drawer to pull out a teabag. At least it was probably her father’s day present he’d be drinking and the last remainder of her cookies that he’d be eating with them. Which is not something she cares about. His hand brushes against the box she’d sent him, before he notices something. 

“What?” Damnit. She’d left her phone out there. It’s buzzing beneath his hand now, as he examines it, reads through the first couple of messages. It won’t take him long to get the general vibe. If he hadn’t heard about her haunting on the way home, he’s certainly figured it out now. Even if her phone case isn’t particularly distinct, there’s only so many people who’s lock screen is a picture of Rhys, Vela, Sandy, and Esme out in the Moab, everyone but her smiling widely. She, the normal exception to their cheeriness, had managed a smirk and a hand up in a peace sign. She cringes at the thought of it, kicking herself internally for not changing it. It’s sentimental. Sappy. “Oh, Esme… again?” 

That voice is so soft. She knows he just thinks she left it here from the last time she stayed over, from the light exasperation, but that doesn’t help. She feels stupid for hiding now. Stupid about all of this. She shouldn’t have come here. She should’ve just dealt. Faced Cornelius’s questions, faced Tillman’s smug little face and jeers. Faced endless requests. She should’ve given them back their friends. She reaches up to her championship ring on its chain around her neck, twists it around. Esme is such a child at times, always running away to the only place she’s ever felt safe. The place that doesn’t want her. 

She hears the sound of her phone left on the counter, beneath the gentle thrum of the water heating up, and Sandoval heading back to where he left his stuff. He rummages through it, unzipping the various different compartments, before finding what he wants. She can’t quite make out what it is or what he’s doing, but she guesses he’s probably got his blackberry and is trying to text another Shoe Thief. The tea kettle beeps, and it takes a couple seconds for Sandoval to finish doing whatever he’s doing to go turn it off, checks to make sure nothing has sprouted in it while it’s heated up before pouring himself his cup. Esme feels heat rushing to her face. How long is she going to stay here for, spy on him as he goes about his normal business? She’s patient— you need to be, to be a good thief — but that just feels wrong. She’s got nothing against the Houston Spies, personally, but some of their shit creeps her out just a bit. Her business is hers. 

She sighs, pushes aside the curtains. 

“Hey,” she says, and Sandoval startles just a little bit. He doesn’t lose his grip on the kettle or worse, spill it all over himself, only takes a step back, thankfully. Maybe she should’ve waited, but if she hadn’t stepped out then, she isn’t sure she ever would’ve. 

“I should’ve known,” he replies warmly, not taken aback for a moment. He considers her for a second, taking in everything, and asks, “Do you want some tea? The water’s been playing nice today, so it should be safe for you.”

She starts to shake her head, but changes her mind. “Why not?” 

He goes and gets out another mug. He eyes it suspiciously for a couple of moments, before putting it back and getting another one. He’s always more careful when she’s around. It’s not that Hellmouth could kill her — she’s as much of a blaseball player as he is — but it’ll make her sick in ways it won’t for him. 

“Chamomile, two cubes of sugar?” 

“You know me so well,” she confirms, moving into the kitchen. “You’re almost out of milk, by the way.” 

“I know. The cows are on strike again, and I’m not going to be a scab.” She nods. It’s always something around here. 

“What’s it this time?” 

“It’s in support of the teacher’s union at HCC. The anti-tourism board is campaigning to raise the tuition. There’s going to be a vote in the senate tonight, if you want to watch with Sutton and I. Hendricks is going to be there.”

“I've got to get back to Yellowstone eventually. Corn'll start worrying about where I ran off to eventually, and I'm not looking forward to a lecture. Besides, If I wanted to watch idiots babble at each other and get nothing done, I’d watch Tillman and Declan try to get back together. It might be less painful.” She rolls her eyes, watching Sandoval as he watches the two cups steep. He’s a good judge of when the tea will be done, as long as he keeps an eye on it. Otherwise, he’ll end up wandering off and forgetting about it for hours, until it’s way too bitter and way too cold. 

“They’re trying again? What happened with Throckmorton? I thought he and that Suzanne boy were making a lovely couple.” He squints in genuine concern, and Esme almost laughs. 

“That was so last week, please try to keep up,” she drolls, before shaking her head. “Kidding. I do not and do not want to know anymore about the latest Shoe Thief’s—“ shoe thief in heavy quotation marks— “love life than I already do.” Love too, for that matter. “Point is. When’s the board going to realize there’s nothing they can do?”

“Their actions have lead to a five percent decrease in visitors over the past two years.” 

“Most of the people who end up going to HCC get Tugged within the week, at most. The free education’s not the problem. The problem is that people are dumb and don’t know what’s good for them.” 

“You come here all the time, and you aren’t from here,” Sandoval points out, as he gets a smaller cup to drop the teabags into and a small plate for the leftover cookies. She pulls out two teaspoons, spinning them around in both until he gets backs and pulls out the teabags. “From with a capital f, anyway.”

“If you think I know what’s good for me, you haven’t been paying attention. Or smart, for that matter.” He frowns at her with his stern disappointed Dad face as he picks up his mug. She grabs the one he pulled out for her in one hand, pulls her phone back into her pocket with the other. Her mug has got some cat’s face on it, which means that it’s probably from Nagomi. “Slash j.” 

“You’re not stupid, Esme.” 

“Who said I was?” She looks from the dining table back to the couch where she’d been sitting not too long ago, trying to figure out which would be best to rest on. Sandy seems to be waiting for her to make a decision. He’s always doing that. Letting her make choices. He’s so annoyingly good at times. Most times. “Not being the sharpest endbringer on the plane doesn’t mean I’m the dullest.” 

She goes back to the couch, getting out one of the glass coasters to keep her tea from staining the wood on the coffee table. Sandoval doesn’t bother. Maybe he figures stains are the least of his problems, when the table could grow eyes at any time. Esme doesn’t consider herself a particularly neat person, but there’s a disposability to things in Hellmouth she’s never going to be used to. This place is still the thing that ate Moab to her, to some extent, she supposes. 

He doesn’t challenge her on the endbringer thing. It used to be a whole thing, him saying the term didn’t necessarily apply because of different cultural contexts and her saying yeah it did because she thought it was funny and that was all that mattered. But that stopped being funny after… she doesn’t know what broke there. So many jokes or other safe places in conversation to wrap back to have fallen to the wayside. 

“Sorry,” he says, after the pause in conversation starts choking them both. 

“No, that’s on me. Sort of killed the conversation.” There’s another pause as Sandoval sips from his cup delicately. This one’s a bit less terrible for him, but Esme can’t stop thinking. Velaquez was here. He was here, for the first time in years, and he left without even saying hi to his husband. Because of her. Because she’d been scared. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks at last, putting his mug down. It’s almost like he’s read her mind and realized just how scared of that question she was. She looks down at her hands. The hands someone else had held upright not too long ago. 

“I’m haunted now,” she says, like that explains jack shit. He looks at her. Searching for some evidence of ghosts, maybe? There’s nothing to see, not on the outside. Nobody’s here right now. Nothing is trying to force it’s way out of the dark, through that song. So why does she still feel like her body isn’t entirely her own? 

“And?” 

He looks at her like he wants to lean over. He’s so touchy with everyone else. Sandy is made of warmth, built for love, and she knows how badly keeping him at arm’s length hurts sometime. But her fragile physical form locking up in his arms hurts worse, for both of them. Boundaries are there for a reason. Hating her body won’t make it change. Hating this won’t make the terror that seizes her every time anyone comes close go away. It won’t make Hellmouth accept her. Still, knowing all this, she can’t help but ask: why can’t she be better yet? It’d be easier with someone else in her body, taking the touch for her, she realizes, her own mind distant. That’s a horrifying thought. It’d be so easy to lose herself from here, to hollow out and be nothing but a shell for the dead to inhabit. 

And if that’s what everyone wants, then why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t she be a martyr again? 

“And what?” she echoes, raising an eyebrow. “You’re not stupid.” 

“I’m flattered you think so highly of me.” He’s wryly amused by her blunt manner but obviously flattered. It’s a rare compliment from her, even something so minimal, and something in Esme’s chest burns. This is what her love looks like. People not being stupid. “But I don’t see how this changes anything. Outside of the game, anyway, and the game isn’t everything.” 

He really believes that. It’s not just a lie he’s telling himself as much as he’s telling her.

“It’s not just when I play,” she clarifies. “I can feel them. I can hear the Trench now.” If she closes her eyes, she thinks she can see it. Water above her, pressing against her skin, against her chest, burying her against the ground with a thousand hands. There are so many bodies blurring into ink around her. Faces she recognizes, faces she don’t. Marble pillars rising into the infinite heights and torches of blue flame, the only light, and then she sees Rhys with his legs merged to some sort of tail and the song is drowning her— 

“Esme,” Sandoval says, voice serious. She opens her eyes, blinks away the darkness. Nobody is touching her. Nothing is at her throat. She reaches up to make sure, before breathing. “Where are you?”

“Your apartment. Hellmouth.”

“That’s right. What are you doing?”

“Talking. Drinking tea.” She looks at her cup, reaches out to hold the handle. Esme’s not ready to pick it up— she doesn’t want to drop it— but having something solid beneath her hands helps her ground herself.

“Good. Who did you play last?” 

“Magic.” She wracks her mind for the details. This is a harder question. She plays so much, all the different games start to bleed into each other. “We won by two. No extra innings. Black hole, we definitely didn’t loop, I’d have remembered that. This girl from, I wanna say the Dalé? She scored for me and then I got one. I’m good. Yeah. Present.” 

“Okay,” Sandoval nods. 

“You’re annoyingly good at that.” He shrugs. Not a compliment he’s willing to accept, huh, even from her. She figures he’d probably rather never have needed to get good at it in the first place. It’s an annoying thought. She’s one of those reasons. Her and her fucked up brain. “Anyway. You were playing the people she was probably on a team with, yeah?” 

“Yes...” he starts, trailing off as he takes a cookie and cracks it in half, dipping one half in his tea. It’s a little stale by now, and Esme’s half tempted to go start making a fresh batch right now. Replace old work with new, better, worker.

“They probably miss her.”

“And?” It’s weird that Sandy’s not getting it. He’s good at emotions when she’s not. 

“And I can give her back. I can give everyone back.” She hates how vulnerable she sounds. To anyone else, her voice now would still be matter of fact, still almost entirely devoid of emotion, but she can tell the difference. She knows how she sounds when she’s weak, and Sandy knows her. He knows her inside and out, and sometimes she can’t keep from hating him for that, just like she hates everyone else. “Vela was here, Sandy.” 

That breaks through his composed veil, if only for a second. Vulnerable. All of his eyes, even the ones up and down his neck, widen like he’s been shot. His mouth is full of crumbs, and he’s got a bit of tea in his heard. He takes a moment to swallow before looking down at the mug lined with gold. It reads REEL COOL DAD, written in black bubble letters on white ceramics with a simple design of fish between COOL and DAD. The gold runs heaviest through the REEL, making it almost impossible to make out, but she’s seen this one before. From the fish pun, she’s pretty sure it’s from Rhys. 

“It’s your life, Esme,” he says, eventually. He doesn’t entirely manage to wipe the deer in the headlights look off his face, but all considered, he manages a good fakery of conviction.. “If that’s what you want to do, then I won’t stop you.” _If that’s what you want to be,_ s he corrects internally. A puppet to be loved, without all the hard edges. 

“I don’t. Of course I don’t. But you want them back. You want them all back. I see you.” Is it an accusation? It sure feels like it is. “Of course I do.” He sighs heavily, like the weight of all the planes and all the worlds is on his shoulders, not just some personal grief and her life. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have that weight for real. He’s not the destined end of everything, not like she is, but he’s so much more important anyway. “But if wishes were pennies, we’d be rich.” 

Esme doesn’t even go for the obvious jab, about them being blaseball players. They’re not exactly beggars. 

“It’s not a wish. I’m right here. Come on. Tell me I’m being selfish.” It takes something strong to keep from slamming the mug down and spilling some of the scolding tea. She manages delicacy, despite everything. She’s angry, and when she’s angry, she’s cold. She’s unbearably cold, as icy as a winter’s storm in anywhere but this place, because this place is never cold. She’s icy like Moab was at night, but this place is always hot. Sandoval’s air conditioning tries to compensate for the pressure from outside, but she can’t help but sweat a bit. He’s fine, of course. He thrives in this heat. He’s built for it. 

“You aren’t selfish for wanting to live your own life, kiddo.” 

Damnit with the perfectly timed kiddo. He always know how to dig inside her, crawl beneath her defenses, and rip out something vulnerable. She’s not a kid, and she’s not his kid. It shouldn’t mean anything, but instead of nothing, it’s everything. She’d started growing so soft, before the Peanut came and knocked everything in her to the ground, digging her face through the mud. On rare days, she’d let people touch her, and she’d touched them back without freezing over. The old hurt was healing. It wasn’t yet a scar, but fresh skin was growing over. She knew she’d never be normal, she knew things would fall apart one day in the future, and she knew she’d grow monstrous, but that was supposed to be _distant._

She hadn’t expected a God to descend. She hadn’t expected her sutures to be ripped so violently open. Each pitch had nearly blown through her chest, each tag had left her bruised as the Shelled Ones had pushed her into the dirt. She’d been bloodied and bruised, but the worst part wasn’t the pain those brutal attacks left but the touch itself. It was bad enough on the field normally, with gentle taps and apologetic grins from the opponents that knew she hated it. 

Esme Ramsey flinches. 

The thing is, she doesn’t want to live her own life as much as she isn’t a kid. Not after all that. It’s not the fear of the loss of control that keeps her from digging right down into the Trench now, calling out for— whoever, really. The girlfriend she can’t even _look_ at’s dead brother? (Twice, she reminds herself, because he’s the real martyr. He’s the one who’s sacrifice meant anything.) It’s not that she doesn’t want to disappear, it’s that she knows it won’t be permanent.  
She could give everything up to the dead, vanish for decades, centuries, hell, even millennia, if she wasn’t delayed first. But she’d be back, eventually, and she’d wake up to the dust of everyone she can’t help but love. 

“Tell that to the crowd,” she manages, sarcastically. She’s a frozen lake with spiderweb cracks in it, and she’s terrified there’s nothing beneath the ice. Her vision is hazy, with Sandoval the only thing she can focus on. She wants to memorize every detail of his face, for when he inevitably goes up in flame, but she can barely picture it now with him right in front of her. Warm brown eyes, broad nose, perfectly white afro around him like a halo.

“I will. As many times as you need me to.”

His lips are curved into something determined, and he looks like Jaylen Hotdogfingers did on the hazy tv screen Esme watched the final stand from as she strode from the underworld for the second time. Sea water had licked her hair, her face, her whole body, but the cyan uniform with the star crossing it was untouched. Her jaw held straight as she faced the monster that’d sent the Shoe Thieves to their knees not that long ago, unflinching as the voice that still haunted the entire team’s nightmares roared loud enough to make Esme’s ears bleed on the other side of the Immaterial Plane. Nothing like the girl in the locker room who’d told Esme to make it fast, with a tremble in her voice and her jaw that revealed the fear behind her stance. Nothing like the man Esme had watched replay the footage of Velaquez’s death in his apartment for hours, forcing himself to cry even long after the tears had stopped coming. 

“I can take care of myself,” she says, even if she doesn’t really believe it.

“You shouldn’t need to.” His words are firm. She wants to protest, to say that what should be isn’t what is, but when Sandy proclaims things like this, it’s so easy to get swept along. He’s not a god, and he’s not a monster. He’s not the sun. He doesn't burn to get close to, scalding and ruthless and so far above them, only to be brought low by an otherwise completely mundane ball. He’s something more. He’s a dad. He’s _her_ dad. “I love you for you, kiddo. Not for what you can do. I miss Rhys and Vela, of course I do, but I’ve mourned them already. You’re still here, Esme, and I’ll do anything and everything to keep it that way.”

“You might need to fight half the league for that.” Esme swallows an ugly sensation in the back of her throat. This is when someone else might hug him. This is when she wants to. But wanting to doesn’t change how her body will react, so she just reaches for another swig of the tea. 

“Esme, for you, I’d ride the train and fight all the gods. I’d fight the whole world and everything beyond that.”

She thinks he might even win, when he says it like that.


End file.
